About this book

If you’ve been working on the web for a while, your bookshelves may already be buckling under the weight of books about HTML and CSS. Do you really need another one?

Hardboiled Web Design is different. It’s for people who want to understand why, when and how to use the latest HTML5 and CSS3 technologies in their everyday work. Not tomorrow or next week, but today. It won’t teach you the basics of writing markup or CSS, but if you’re hungry to learn about how the latest technologies and techniques will make your websites and applications more creative, flexible and adaptable, then this is the book for you.

Are you ready to get hardboiled?

Who should read this book?

If you care about markup, you’re in for a treat because we focus on how to use the new semantic elements contained within HTML5 right now. We also cover microformats and WAI-ARIA landmark roles, looking at how they’ll reduce your reliance on presentational elements and attributes, as well as making your websites and applications more useful without doing anything more than writing HTML.

If you’re a designer who wants to learn the creative opportunities offered by CSS3, this book will teach you how to use CSS3 in browsers that support its new properties, and offers a fresh perspective on how to handle older, less capable browsers.

You’ll need to be willing to leave your preconceptions at the door, and hungry to learn about how using HTML5 and CSS3 will change the way you design and develop for the web. Is your foot on the accelerator? Buckle up, let’s go.

Topics include:

Part 1: Getting hardboiled

In Getting hardboiled, you’ll learn about what it means to be hardboiled. You’ll discover why we need to re-evaluate concepts such as progressive enhancement and find out the cold, hard truths about how standards are really developed. You’ll find out why websites cannot, need not and should not look the same in every browser and what this means for us and the people we work for. Above all else, you’ll learn that change isn’t coming, it’s already here.

Part 2: Hardboiled HTML

In Hardboiled HTML, you’ll learn about HTML5—the latest version of HTML that brings with it new semantic elements. You’ll also discover microformats—simple markup patterns for making data machine-readable—and investigate WAI-ARIA Roles. All of these will reduce your reliance on presentational elements and attributes. Get ready, it’s time to make your HTML hardboiled.

Part 3: Hardboiled CSS3

In Hardboiled CSS3, you’ll learn about web fonts for better type and typography, how to layer colour with RGBa and how to use opacity. You’ll discover how use CSS3 multiple background images and how to make borders rounded and full of images. You’ll wind up knowing how to replace many images with CSS3 gradients to make your designs lighter and more flexible. Your world may never be quite the same again.

Part 4: More hardboiled CSS3

In More hardboiled CSS3, you’ll learn about how to translate, scale, rotate and skew elements using CSS transforms in two and three dimensions. You’ll find out how to make state changes smoother with a host of CSS transitions, and finish off by discovering animations in CSS: an emerging standard that has already caught the eye of many of today’s top web designers.